Rabat – In a new survey, four Moroccan cities have ranked in a list of Africa’s top 10 cities for quality of life. The survey results were released on Tuesday.

Nicknamed the Ochre City in honour of the walls surrounding the old medina district, Marrakech took the coveted first place spot. Casablanca, Rabat and Fez also made it onto the list.

The survey took into consideration 100 of the continent’s capitals and major urban centres and based its quality of life criteria on social and living conditions, infrastructure, governance and environment.

Swiss urban sociologist, Jerome Chenal, was the director of the survey, conducted by Swiss research body Communaute d’Etudes pour l’Amenagement du Territoire at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL).

“They are cities that are not huge,” he said, “where real work has been done to improve infrastructure, people’s quality of life (and) housing in a stable political context.” EPFL said it intends to perform the study every year with the goal of standardizing data on African cities.

Other cities which made it to the top ten included Johannesburg and Cape Town, Alexandria and Cairo.The Mauritius capital of Port Louis, Tunis rounded up the remaining cities in the ranking.

“Until now, rankings for Africa were done for investors and expatriates,” Chenal told Afrique Mediterranee Business, the Paris-based magazine that commissioned the study. This was the first study done to reflect the quality of life for average citizens in Africa.